Sunday, December 10, 2006

Everyone from John McCain, who says it a different way, to Joe Biden, to -- across the board -- is saying, we have one last shot to figure out how to deal with the chaos in Iraq. If we can't, you better get out.

Because there's a civil war, and you got to -- if there's a civil war, Don, where you have the Mahdi army, as well as what they call the Badr Brigade, which is the Iranian-trained outfit that works for the -- that's the Shia outfit with the Dawa (inaudible) party. If those guys start shooting at the same time the insurgents are, all the king's horses and all the king's men aren't going to keep that country together again.

We've got one last shot here to separate these parties, and you have to do it politically. And if you don't do the kind of thing we did in Dayton when we settled the situation in Bosnia -- and I might add, no one died in the last (inaudible), no American has died, and now they're more of a united country -- if we don't do something like that, we will have traded a dictator for chaos on this guy's watch.

Joe Biden, 12/13/05 press conference:

The dividing line is whether or not, as in the case of Jack Murtha and me -- Jack Murtha, God love him, I think he believes that we have gone beyond the pale, that there is no reason to think the president is going to change course and the only rational position in the Hobson's choices we're left with is over time redeploy American forces because there's no winning strategy.

WALLACE: As we've been saying, Democratic Congressman Jack Murtha this week called for bringing U.S. troops back home. Is that a good idea?

BIDEN: Not immediately, no. I can understand Jack's frustration. This is a guy who has concluded that so far we've handled this effort incompetently, but it seems to me that we have one last shot at getting this right.

Joe Biden, Charlie Rose show, June 21, 2005:

I personally think we should not set an exit date. I personally think we should take one last shot at trying to do this the right way. I think it still can be done, although more difficult.

Joe Biden, Face the Nation, 6/19/2005:

We need time. There's one last shot at getting this right in Iraq.

Joe Biden, Hardball, May 24, 2004:

We've made significant mistakes. Our one last shot to get this right, unite the world, convince the Iraqi people that this is not just a U.S. occupation, is June 30.

"I am convinced we have one last shot at bringing the world into Iraq," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. "We must do everything in our power to seize it.

"I'd like to see President Bush go to Europe, call a summit and ask - ask - for more help. We might have to give up some more authority to get it. But as I keep saying, we've got to stop treating Iraq like some kind of prize."